Three gifts, one wise-guy.

So I’ve decided to do something a little different.  Not overlooking my kids or those closest to me, but honestly, I just absolutely hate Christmas.  I hate what we’ve made it into, and I hate that I feel very little joy around it.  Sure, it’s the birthday of ‘Christ our King’, ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘the Savior’, all those titles.  But what if it doesn’t resonate with you?  And it doesn’t have to resonate for you to have faith.  It really isn’t about that. “It’s a trap!”  Like Colonel Akbar calling out to those going into the second death star.  December becomes our trap.  And I know that many are festive and jolly, and I am thankful that those people exist.  They counter for me and my Scrooge, Grinch, “what the hell are we doing this?” beliefs.  But you don’t have to be anything other than yourself.  And I know that I’M NOT ALONE IN THIS! 

The Story talks about a boy being born, and it talks about simple.  It doesn’t talk about gifts until later in the story when three Wisemen from come from afar (‘a fire’ if you’re from the south) to worship.  Well I don’t know that I even do that well, the worshiping, because my faith is entrenched so much in the spirit and prayers echoed in the mountains that sometimes it’s hard to join in our modern-day corporate worship.  Really hard.  But I woke up this morning, still fighting bronchitis, still a little down, trying to figure out how in the hell I can make a difference.

It’s simple, in the bigger scope of the world it’s sometimes hard to see that we’re making a difference, but in my neighborhood, the places that I live in, shop in, I have the ability to do much more.  So Walmart was my first stop.  I got the two or three items that I needed, and I paced up and down the checkout aisles until I found someone I thought was the right person.  A mother with a teenage daughter and a little 3 1/2 year-old boy.  I have one of those.  I struck up a short conversation about her son, said merry Christmas, and then before she could finish unloading her cart, I said “Ma’am can I do something for you. Can I buy your groceries?”

She gave me a hug, she teared up and allowed me to buy them.  Hugging me again before we parted ways.  I felt a little something.  What I really want is to feel something about the stupid fucking holiday.

I got back in my truck and cried.  My kids really don’t need excess.  They’re going to have a good Christmas no matter what.  I hate this holiday, but maybe I can do something a little better than just buying more stuff to break and throw away down the road.

My second stop was at one of the local Grocery stores.  Similar situation.  It’s incredibly heartwarming to see the look on a person’s face when they realize you’re for real.  I simply paid for their groceries, walked out and got in my truck.  No expectations, just trying to do a good deed.  

I’m on stop number three.  Kroger #2.  Hope I can show a little more compassion and Christmas spirit, and might actually feel something “Grinch-like” in the process (remember his heart grew three sizes that day!”)


Merry Christmas!

Like Tommy Boy!

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Matthew 10:34

A sword or possibly a Callahan Brake Pad?!

Have you seen the movie?  Please say yes.  It’s one of those stupidly funny SNL spinoffs that defined a generation of comedy that we may never have again.  And it also is a pretty good life lesson, if you can get through the slapstick, fat guy in a little coat, Rob Lowe destroying humor.

God I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I want to be a little more like Tommy.

In April of this year I made a decision to live the most authentic life I could live.  Not by anyone else’s standards, but by the truth that I believe inside me.

And...

I failed.

I cracked and lost.  Realized that it wasn’t as simple as putting words on a page and believing that those plans will happen.  That in my moxie I left out the ‘how'.  I forgot reality for just a moment, a couple of months actually and found myself struggling much like before.  The plan was grand and glorious, but also misconceived and flawed.  Full of holes.  I had let emotion and the need to prove I was more than a traveling tuba salesman drive my attempted future.

So yes, I have failed.

If I wanted to make everything rosy and palatable.  Wrapped up like the bows on so many gifts under trees at this time of year, I could write this in a very different way.  I’m sure I could convince myself and some of you reading (all 4 of you) that this was a minor setback.  A bump in the road.

It’s not.  I am back to beyond step one.  First and 45 in football vernacular.

Instead of blowing smoke up your ass, I have to be real.  Authentic means that it’s sometimes, maybe often times messy (remember the verse at the top - sword over peace).  One thing that I realize, I am so thankful for the faith that I have.  But even that gets whitewashed so many times.  I see many trying to make it seem as if faith gives us privilege, or we’re to “give it to God” and everything will be alright.  Well guess what?  I am alright.  I’m not defeated, just down.  And even if I don’t make it to where I hoped I would go, accomplish all that I hoped to, I know that my beliefs are there.  And they are Master Yoda strong, not fickle like Luke’s so often were.

But what does all this mean?

It means tomorrow I get up.  I face the tasks at hand.  This week I have several hard conversations that need to be had.  I’ve got some plans to reconsider, and I’ve got to work. I always work.  I’m not sure the outcome, but I am going to be real.  Be authentic to me.

I’m not sure exactly where all this is going to lead, and I’m not scared in that.  I mean I don’t want to end up living in a “van down by the river”, but I’ll take where I’m led.

I went hiking for the first time in almost a month this last Thursday. Then again on Saturday.  I need that.  I hear the spirit there.  My mind clears, and the aches I feel are not the sickness that seems to continue to grip me, but aches of sore muscles that have been yearning to be out there. It hurt on the uphills.  Just like it hurts right now to know that I’ve got to go back up.  But I can’t stay where I’m at.

So if you have the ability, take the place you’re in - Find your faith.  Find solace in you.  Who you were made to be.  And don’t rest in the complacency of our times.  We were made for so much more than streaming movies and video games, waiting on amazon packages and living lackluster lives.

And when you fail.  When life really sucks.  Just remember that those times are just seasons. Valleys on the way to trails moving through the mountains.

Do I regret the decision to be more authentic?  No.  It was the first taste of truth and 'belief in me' that I’ve had in such a long time. And I’d rather be right than doing things for society’s “right reasons”.

So, I’ve failed.  Now I just have to get up.

Click to Watch Tommy Boy Chicken Wing Scene

"Hallelujah! Holy sh-t! Where's the Tylenol?"

“Oh, the silent majesty of a winter’s morn. The clean, cool chill of the holiday air. An asshole in his bathrobe, emptying a chemical toilet into my sewer.”

I feel dumped on.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
I've been up all night.  

Let me preface what I'm going to write below with this.  I do not want anyone's pity.  I do not want to make what I am about to share a public spectacle.  What I do ask is for ALL of you, whether you believe in anything beyond this world or not, to PRAY.  Pray for the dark, hardened, stench of rot that might have once held a feeling part inside her.  Pray for her fucking soul, if there be anything resembling the burnt-out husk of one inside her.

I'm aching tonight.  Terribly.  I have realized over the last couple of months that the journey I am walking through at the moment is a parallel of the one I went through with Cade and Cambrey's mom soon after we were divorced.  And it is so F*C&ing eerie!!!  Yet 10,000 times worse than when they were moved away.  And I am mostly to blame.  I can blame her emotional sway that took me almost two years to beak.  I can blame my lawyer.  But in the end I am the one who let this happen without a battle-royal.  A twenty man, last man standing fight that should have at least given me a fighting chance against the gorgon.  

I sit and watch, trying to communicate, wanting to touch.  Wanting to hold him when he's upset, wanting so much to help him understand.  And what I'm getting is a game.  A game not being played by my three year old, but a game of control being played by an adult who should understand the hurts that he doesn't understand.  The loss of time and proximity that he can't begin to comprehend.  His spirit recognizes what she cannot.  The fracture and how it is affecting the core of our son's heart.  Her tepid attempts to console him are a laugh at me through the screen.  She knows she owns the rights to control.  Because how can you question a three year old about such deep concerns?  I've had attorneys say that the emotional isn't questioned in the courts, and I've seen it firsthand. 

If only there was a child psychologist in his life...... wait....... well you all know that answer.

After a week or so of seeing him pull back from our time talking, and realize I'm not expecting more than a few minutes at best with him on the screen each day, I felt I had to do something.  It will be over a month until I see him if I didn't ask.  And it shouldn't be an ask at all.  Again, the control game.

I texted her and asked to talk briefly.  I wanted to surprise him, and selfishly get to see his face and hug him tight.  I told her I wanted to come up and visit for a day.  And yes, I assured her I would pay for the trip - over $500 just for the flight - just to see him for a day, an afternoon.  She said yes.  But then my gut started to feel something.

I texted her just a few minutes after I booked the plane ticket.  Feeling I needed to get it in writing.  

And I got it.  What my gut was screaming at me.  "It wasn't a convenient time."  "It was too much."  Hell, I had just asked to see him for a few hours.  He wouldn't care if they were traveling the next day.  He might actually be good after spending just a little time with dad.  Might even give her time to pack.  Might be good for her son.

She is a snake.  A bitter person who shows such a pretty, put-together exterior.  But her actions show.  She doesn't really care for the "tribe"* she teared up and described us needing to be.  She only cares about control.  And she has it... for now.

I have to fight.  I am white hot and so angry that I haven't been able to sleep, hardly able to breathe.  I want my son to be happy and healthy, but the realization of castration as a father is going to force me to grow a new pair and make some waves.

So, in the words of Clarke Griswold...

"Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?"

Amen.


*below is the article she professed such a yearning for when we were working out our visitation

Our Tribe - Co-Parenting